Former Blairsville high school reportedly sold on eBay

The former public school on South Walnut Street in Blairsville has sat vacant since last year.

Ivy grows both inside and out. Ragged curtains still hang in the upstairs windows, left over from the building's days as an apartment house. A painted sign advertises Body Graphix, a defunct tattoo parlor that was housed in the school's basement until several years ago.

Recently, however, neighbors noticed something new: a sign out front announced that the school was for sale on eBay.

According to the online auction site, it sold for $15,100 on May 26, after 33 bids.

Though eBay does not release the names of auction participants, Indiana County property records show that the Blairsville-Saltsburg School District sold the school to Luis Perez of Blairsville for $67,500 in 1997. After he moved to Orlando, Fla., the building was left vacant. It was sold at a judicial tax sale May 3 and was scheduled to be deeded to Alexis Ament of Punxatawney. The deed will not be final until June 17.

Reached by phone, Alexis Ament's father, Robert, said that he and his daughter had bought the property as an investment and immediately listed it on eBay.

"The lady who bought it is in California," Robert Ament said, referring to the state and not the Washington County borough. "She's planning on teaching some foreign students there."

Ament declined to name the buyer or elaborate about the sale.

"We've been hoping that somebody would buy it and make something out of it," said Dorrie Forsha, 82, a alumna of the school. "It would be a great addition to Blairsville if they do."

Forsha, who serves as chairman of research and the museum at the Blairsville Area Historical Society, said that the school had been built in 1915 after the Blairsville School Board issued a controversial $60,000 bond.

The building served as the high school until 1931, when a larger high school opened on North Walnut. The South Walnut building became the elementary school that Forsha attended in the 1930s.

"I went to school there up until the sixth-grade," Forsha remembered. "It was a good school. The teachers were very nice. Mrs. Sandles was the principal. She was very strict."

The Blairsville school was not the only one listed on eBay-- a former high school in Carmen, Okla., and an elementary in Branson, Mo., are for sale on the site.